


Touch Me

by MoreHuman



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Queer Relationship, Developing Relationship, M/M, Queer Feelings, Singing, Spring Awakening References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23378710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoreHuman/pseuds/MoreHuman
Summary: If David had asked out of jealousy or insecurity or even just a misplaced desire to mend the big closeted hole in Patrick’s past, he would be more than happy to ignore it, let it drop, as requested. But that’s not why David asked. He asked because he’s curious. Because Patrick has an experience with sex that David Rose, his gloriously queer boyfriend who’s had every kind of sex there is, doesn’t understand but wants to.And that’s. Well. That’s not something he’ll forget. That’s an opportunity.That’s a question he’s going to answer.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, past Patrick Brewer/Original Female Character
Comments: 66
Kudos: 340





	Touch Me

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, listen. I know nothing about music, and I certainly can’t _describe_ music in words. So I’ll feel loads better about you reading this if you take a few minutes to watch this video of [”Touch Me”](https://youtu.be/tDtc9ZoQLmw) from _Spring Awakening_ first. I looked up how to insert an HTML link and everything, that’s how important this is. Sorry for the bootleg quality, but there’s no way Patrick would settle for the inferior lyrics in the soundtrack version, so I couldn’t link to that.
> 
> You could also listen to [“Don’t Do Sadness/Blue Wind”](https://youtu.be/mJtjgFF9l-4). It’s not as central to this story, but it is a great song. You don’t need any other knowledge of the musical or its plot.
> 
> Thanks to Likerealpeopledo and Distractivate for always responding to my vague whining about this fic with enthusiasm and broom emojis for the brain weasels.

“What does it feel like to only be attracted to men? Describe it to me.”

David’s still panting when he says this, his face half pressed into the pillow, so at first Patrick can’t be sure he’s heard him right.

“What?” he asks, because this seems like the most urgent question, followed by, “Right now?”

To punctuate his point about timing, he presses his bare chest more heavily down into David’s naked back and buries a kiss in his hair. He luxuriates in this moment as long as he dares, inhaling the sweet tang of sweat mixed with Rose Apothecary’s finest natural shampoo, letting each of David’s breaths expand into his own rib cage. He gives it three Mississippis. Then he rolls back onto the empty side of his bed.

“Ignore me,” David says. A silver-ringed hand reaches blindly back toward Patrick and lands clumsily across the bridge of his nose. “Forget I said anything. A phenomenal sex high has a way of bringing out my curious side.”

Patrick’s brain stutters, can’t decide which part of this statement to focus on— _phenomenal sex high_ or _my curious side_. By the time he settles on both, David has already retreated down the hall to the shower. Patrick will follow in a minute—Ray won’t be done losing at poker for another hour or two, so it’s safe to share—but first he stares deep into the Magic Eye swirl of the floral wallpaper and tries to steady his thoughts. 

He knows by now that sex tends to pour unfiltered words from David, of course, but they’re usually compliments or confessions, not questions. Not that the origin of this one is particularly mysterious. It was only a couple of weeks ago that a redheaded reminder of Patrick’s history sleeping exclusively with women crashed the Rose family barbecue and threatened to ruin everyone’s appetite for sliders forever. But he can tell this isn’t about Rachel, not really.

If it were, he’d forget it. If David had asked out of jealousy or insecurity or even just a misplaced desire to mend the big closeted hole in Patrick’s past, he would be more than happy to ignore it, let it drop, as requested. But that’s not why David asked. He asked because he’s curious. Because Patrick has an experience with sex that David Rose, his gloriously queer boyfriend who’s had every kind of sex there is, doesn’t understand but wants to.

And that’s. Well. That’s not something he’ll forget. That’s an opportunity.

That’s a question he’s going to answer.

***

It’s easier said than done, of course. Because attraction to exclusively one gender is considered the default, no one seems to have bothered inventing the language to talk about it.

Two days later, Patrick still doesn’t know where to start. Some desperate googling in between restocking the lip balms and spritzing the vegetables leads him to a Wikipedia definition of monosexuality, but that’s not what David asked. He didn’t ask what it means, he asked how it feels. So how _does_ it feel?

_Describe it to me._

Something about this phrase keeps tugging Patrick’s memory in a direction he’s conditioned himself to resist. He used to think he was resisting because he didn’t like thinking about people he’d slept with who weren’t Rachel, but that explanation has recently been disqualified. He allows himself to reevaluate.

Her name was Tessa, a girl he dated briefly in university. She was one of those theatre majors who had showtunes (plural) on her make-out mix. They were on her dorm bed one night, listening to the CD and doing what it said, right there on the jewel case cover in Sharpie, to do. The track changed, and some slow guitar strumming made her moan against his lips and pull him closer.

“This song is so fucking sexy,” she gasped a short while later, as the music reached some kind of crescendo.

“Really?” Patrick said, sitting up slightly to hear better. It just sounded like an assortment of vowels in 6/8 time to him. “How? Describe it to me.”

Tessa giggled like he was joking, which he wasn’t. “I think if I have to describe it to you, there’s probably something wrong with you.”

He did pretend he was joking, then. He said something about choosing the wrong moment to help her study for music theory and they both laughed. For good measure, he reached behind her and undid the clasp of her bra, just like he’d practiced, because it seemed like the moment for that. He really didn’t want anything to be wrong with him.

A few days later he asked, casually, for the name of the song and found out it was “Touch Me” from a new musical called _Spring Awakening_ , which Tessa had _very_ strong feelings about. He burned a copy of her soundtrack on the sly and played it a few times when no one was around, trying to hear what she heard in it. The lyrics weren’t explicit, but they left little room for interpretation, full of “oh my god”s and “that’s so nice”s and “just like that”s. The music had a rolling rhythm and building key changes and generally just sounded like an overblown musical parody of what sex was supposed to feel like. Nothing close to the quiet satisfaction that twenty-year-old Patrick already knew to be the real thing.

Just to make sure he covered all his bases, he did something he’d never done before and pirated a bootleg video of the full Broadway show. That’s how he found out that there was a fidgety character named Moritz who, in the middle of the number, stammered out “Not that I’m saying I wouldn’t want– Would ever want to not– Would ever not want– I have to go!” and rushed from the stage. No matter how many times he watched it, this restless interruption was the only part of the song Patrick ever understood.

Shortly after that, Tessa discovered he could play guitar and begged him to sing “Touch Me” for her. He said it was out of his range, even though it wasn’t, and offered to learn “Don’t Do Sadness,” one of Moritz’s songs, instead. This was an acceptable compromise for Tessa, because it meant she got to duet with him and sing Ilse’s “Blue Wind” part. She had a wonderful, sultry voice and they killed whenever the opportunity to sing together arose, which it always did, at one of the weird theatre parties she was constantly dragging him to.

Patrick liked singing “Don’t Do Sadness” so much that he kept it up even after he stopped seeing Tessa and lost his audience. It was a dark, angry song, but sometimes it was fun to pretend to feel that. He can still remember his favorite line:

_Nothing going going wild in you, you know_

He used to sit alone in his dorm room, wringing the same chord progression from his guitar and gritting out just this one phrase over and over until it felt like the truth.

He never thought to question, at the time, why he wanted this phrase to feel like the truth. But that’s the thing about repression, he’s starting to realize now. It works best when you don’t know why you’re doing it.

***

It’s probably because Patrick was just thinking about Tessa, just thinking about “Don’t Do Sadness,” that another set of lyrics springs to mind when _Dad_ flashes on his caller ID later that afternoon.

_So maybe I should be some kind of laundry line_

It’s David’s day off, and he’s alone in the store. He picks up.

“Hey, son! Haven’t talked in a bit. Anything new?”

 _Hang their things on me  
_ _And I will swing ’em dry_

“Same old, same old. What’s new with you?”

***

When he gets home that night, Patrick types “spring awakening live” into YouTube, more to drown this earworm than anything else. The first hit is a bootleg recording of the original Broadway cast. It’s not the same one he watched in university, as far as he can remember, but it’s familiar enough. He hits play and lets it run in the background while he folds some laundry on his bed.

The basket is empty and he’s just deciding whether to get the iron out now or wait until tomorrow morning to unwrinkle his jeans when his phone chimes. It’s an alert from Words with Friends, letting him know Stevie has made her next move. It’s the first he’s heard from her since he and David made up. He sent her a new wholesome meme last week (a fluffy white puppy drinking from a juice box labeled “i love my friends”), but didn’t get back the middle finger emoji that has become their ritual exchange. A few days ago he escalated to an actual text:

_So this leather poncho David swears he owns. Fact or fiction?_

He’s trying not to read too much into the fact that she never replied, but somehow he won’t trust that he’s back on solid ground until he and Stevie are ganging up on David again. Maybe Words with Friends is her way of reaching out.

He opens the app and sees she’s turned his previous play, TRAY, into BETRAYAL. So. Not exactly a warm and fuzzy message. And she got a triple word score, too. Fuck.

At first it seemed like a smart move to let his boyfriend’s best friend kick his ass at this game. It seemed like a smart move to make her his friend, too. It seemed like a smart move right up until he realized losing David would mean losing them both. Once it sank in that losing David could mean losing too much, he felt anything but smart.

Patrick has been through a lot of breakups, some of them his choice and some of them not. He has hurt and been hurt and always gotten through it. His last breakup hurt so much that getting through it meant moving his entire life somewhere new. And still he’s never experienced anything like that week of almost breaking up with David, when he thought he might have to give up this new version of himself that he so desperately wanted to hold on to. For the first time in his life, there were parts to him that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to take with him if he had to move on.

At the lowest point of that week, he allowed himself a single moment of selfishness. He was scrolling through a phone full of contacts he couldn’t talk to, standing in a store he couldn’t fill by himself, looking out at a town he couldn’t hide in, and begged silently for all of it, all of them: _Please, I’m not done needing you yet._

He shakes off the memory, reminds himself that he’s not losing David, the store, the town. Even Stevie will come around, eventually. He doesn’t need to move on from any of it. He’s going to stay. He’s going to earn it.

He plans to start by playing his next Word with his Friend, only he finds he suddenly can’t concentrate on the board or letters on the screen in front of him. There’s a shift in his skin, a prickle down his spine, a hot clench in his belly, all newly familiar. He’s… getting turned on? He’s getting turned on staring at digital tiles that spell out YPSUUNG, and it doesn’t make any sense. 

Then he hears them. The assortment of vowels in 6/8 time. “Touch Me” is playing through his laptop speakers.

He gets up and drags the video slider back to the beginning of the song. Once it plays through, he does it again.

Tessa was right. Well, half right. There was never anything wrong with him, but the way this song works doesn’t need to be described. The way he feels it in his body now doesn’t need to be described. 

But he’s gonna try. He reaches for his guitar.

***

It takes some time to learn, because the song is trickier to arrange than he thought (fuck 6/8 time), and he can only work on it when David’s not around. He’d prefer to work on it when Ray’s not around either, but whenever Ray’s not around, David is around. Alone time is back to being too scarce a commodity not to share.

“Patrick!” His bedroom door was closed, it’s always closed, but Ray travels by osmosis; no semi-permeable barrier can contain him. “That’s a very sexy song! I guess you and David really have reconciled.”

Patrick knows he should be embarrassed, but he’s not, somehow. It feels good to have Ray overhear this song, know it’s sexy, and know it’s for David. After years of stubbornly defending the wrong boundaries, there’s something refreshing about living with someone for whom the concept has absolutely no meaning. Someone you can always count on to tell you exactly what they see.

“Do you think maybe it’s too sexy for an open mic, though?” Ray continues. “Bob has delicate ears.”

“Oh, this isn’t for open mic. I think I’ll need some privacy to sing this one.” 

From the blank look this gets, Patrick can tell he’s going to have to be more direct, and that’s another thing he enjoys about talking to Ray. You need to say exactly what you mean and nothing else. It’s a good skill to practice.

“Do you think David and I could have the house to ourselves on Saturday night? It’s our five-month anniversary.”

Of course Ray agrees, and fifteen minutes of him lingering in the doorway, chatting about his cousin in Elmdale who could use some company because she’s just had bunion surgery, is the only price Patrick has to pay. 

Once he’s gone, the music starts flowing a little easier, behaving itself under Patrick’s fingers. It’s not surprising. He’s always done his best work under a deadline, and now he has one.

***

“I thought we weren’t doing this anymore.” David’s eyeing the guitar like it might bite. 

“Doing what?” Patrick plucks at his A string and gives the tuning peg a final, fractional twist. “I’ve never serenaded you on Ray’s couch before. You must be thinking of someone else.”

“Mmm, very funny. No, I mean the big monthly anniversary thing. Didn’t we–” David gulps so loudly that Patrick can hear every onomatopoeic consonant of it. “Didn’t we learn our lesson about tempting fate?”

“I would say what we learned is that we’re both responsible for our own actions and fate has nothing to do with it.” Patrick stops messing with his guitar and gives his boyfriend his full attention. “Anyway, this isn’t a big anniversary thing.”

“Well, a serenade is always a big thing, so. Is it not actually our anniversary?” David’s eyebrows stumble over something. “You’re not about to break up with me through song, are you?”

At one point this question would have been ten percent joke masking ninety percent fear. The numbers haven’t exactly flipped yet, but they’re more than halfway there.

“Not on guitar,” Patrick says. “All my breakup songs are arranged for the accordion.”

“Well that’s–” David’s mouth flails in wordless horror. “Let’s hope I never hear one of those.”

Patrick has to chew his lip to keep that _never_ from making him smile wider than it should. He knows there’s nothing he can do about his eyes. _Let’s hope,_ he silently agrees. 

“You’re safe for tonight,” Patrick says, shifting his fingers against the fretboard so the strings hum and squeak. “Anyway no, I’m doing this because a couple of weeks ago you asked me what it feels like to be attracted only to guys.”

“Oh,” David waves a hand in several directions at once, “I told you to forget–”

“And I know you told me to forget you said anything, but I didn’t want to.” Patrick tries to catch his boyfriend’s gaze even as it’s sliding away. “I feel really lucky to be with someone who would ask me a question like that. It made me think about it in a way I never would have on my own. So I wanted to try to give you an answer.”

“An answer… in song?”

This is the part where Patrick should probably worry that he’s made a mistake, but he doesn’t. There’s something about David’s hesitance that always makes it easy to reply with certainty.

“Yes.” He strums out a few notes, not really starting his arrangement, but circling in on it. “There’s this song that I never used to understand, back when I first heard it. When I’d only ever been with women. It’s from a musical called _Spring Awakening_ and–”

“Okay. Hmm.” David’s eyes go wide and then squint up at the ceiling. “Okay.”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Um. Yes? Sort of? I had a fling with Jonathan Groff back when it swept the Tonys. And then with Lea Michelle. And then again with– Well. It was a messy time.”

Patrick grins. This is new, David letting himself talk about his history the way he talks about everything else, like he can’t keep the words in. It’s awkward still, but filling each other in about their past relationships is already starting to feel less like obligation and more like habit.

“That doesn’t sound like the worst mess to be in,” Patrick says. He spares a thought for Tessa, who would be thrilled to know she’s now three degrees of sexual separation from two of her idols. Maybe he should Facebook her. “Anyway, I’m not nearly as talented as either of them, but–”

“There’s no comparison,” David interrupts, emphatic in his reassurance. “Trust me.”

Patrick chuckles. “I actually meant… my voice. But thank you.”

“Oh. Well.” It’s not often that David is the one blushing. “I never heard them sing, so.”

This isn’t shocking news, exactly. Patrick is beginning to grasp just how starved for romance David was in his old life, but he still can’t imagine anybody passing up an opportunity to impress him. How could you spend any amount of time in David Rose’s presence and not want him to see everything you’re capable of?

Patrick starts the arrangement in earnest. He still has more to say, but he can loop the strummy intro as many times as he needs to.

“I had this girlfriend in university who listened to the soundtrack nonstop and this one song in particular.” That was the cue, just there. “She asked me to sing it for her, but I never did. I never felt it the way she felt it. But I happened to hear it the other day, and now…” He lets the cue go by a second time. Not yet. “Well, I want to sing it for you so you can see what it feels like now. It’s the best way I could think of to explain.”

The cue comes around again. And goes by again. Patrick takes a deep breath. He won’t let himself back out of this now.

“Anyway, here’s Wonderwall.”

“Okay.” A narrowing of eyes. “I _think_ you’re joking, but if not–”

David’s indignation provides just enough distraction for Patrick to locate his courage. He starts singing.

_“Where I go, when I go there,”_

He tries to concentrate on how he feels, just like he practiced, rather than on how he sounds. The lyrics float in and out in bits, through the churn of his thoughts.

_“No more memory anymore.”_

There are the generalities of David’s touch that thrill him, of course. The grip of large hands on his shoulders, the back of his neck, through his hair. The scrape of stubble on his cheek, his chest, between his thighs. The giddy lurch of being pulled into someone’s lap, and the breathless crush of being pinned beneath a male body. Not the weight or size of it so much as how it’s wielded, with pressure and strength and friction in all the right places.

_“Touch me, just like that.”_

But the generalities pale in comparison to the specifics. Even with incomplete data, Patrick is sure that no one touches like David. With his hands and fingers and lips and tongue, sure, but also with his jaw and ribs and hips and ankles. It’s not the _what_ but the _how_ of his body that makes contact; it’s the way David moves through the world—deliberately, intentionally, passionately or not at all.

_“And that– oh, yeah– now that’s heaven.”_

David touches to create a curated environment. Every overwhelming moment contains layers and layers of his careful details—the ridge of his teeth along Patrick’s neck, a single thumbnail up Patrick’s thigh, his warm breath between Patrick’s shoulder blades. David puts all his sharp and soft edges to work. The precision and exactitude of it makes every wild, grasping, gasping response it draws from Patrick feel precisely, exactly correct.

_“Now, that I like; god, that’s so nice.”_

They say great sex is an out-of-body experience, but sex with David is the first in-body experience of Patrick’s life. The first time he felt both of David’s palms under his clothes at once, something deep and fundamental within him leapt up to meet them. He had been living with a gap just beneath his skin, never knowing that his body was made to carry things like lust, desire, pleasure on its surface until they connected with sudden, shuddering impact. 

_“O-o-o-oh my god, o-o-oh yeah yeah yeah.  
_ _O-o-o-oh my god, o-o-oh yeah yeah yeah.”_

Patrick feels these extended _oh_ s roll up from his diaphragm, through his throat, the 6/8 time paying off. This part of the arrangement is low on lyrics and the rising, modulating moan of the melody leaves him exposed. He made himself a promise not to look away from David at this point, and he’s surprised to find it’s not even a challenge. Because David is the one not looking away. The lyrics come back and he’s still not looking away.

 _“Only you there in the kiss,  
_ _with nothing missing–”_

There’s space between them on the couch, but Patrick can’t sense any of it; even David’s eye contact feels physical. Tangible. It surrounds him and holds him in place.

_“Only in and out your lips–”_

Patrick used to think of touch as a verb, just what people do to each other. David makes him feel it as a preposition, full of _across_ and _around_ and _against_ and _toward_ and _through_ and _into_ and _inside_. There’s a _before_ and _beyond_ in it. It has direction and purpose, a past and a future.

_“Tell me, please, all is forgiven.”_

David has touched like a thousand people, but Patrick suspects there are very few people he’s touched a thousand times. He can feel that sometimes, too. That skitter and falter in David’s fingers, like he’s not sure how many times he’s allowed to use them before they go from needed to needy. Like at any moment he might stumble across the magic number, the magic gesture that will make Patrick disappear. Patrick hasn’t figured out, yet, how to convince David that he’s had his fill of disappearing.

_“Touch me, just try it.”_

The first time David ever closed the distance between them, in the front seat of a Hyundai in the parking lot of a motel, Patrick couldn’t do anything but be still. Once he learned why, David made a joke about being a generous person. It wasn’t a joke to Patrick. That was when he started to understand how few opportunities David’s been given to be generous. Or how few of the given opportunities David’s allowed himself to take, Patrick isn’t sure. But if being still is what it takes to keep David reaching for him, to let him learn to be generous with himself, that's what Patrick will do. What a relief, finally, to get to be still.

 _“I love your light,  
_ _I’ll love you right.”_

These lines almost didn’t make it into the arrangement. They edge too close to the words Patrick has said before but never meant, not like this. He’s afraid he’ll reveal too much too soon, and he probably does. He pours his whole voice into these lyrics and feels it slip, just for a second, beyond his control.

 _“Touch me,”_ Patrick sings, and David jolts like it’s an actual command and he’s ready to do it.

 _“Love me,”_ Patrick sings, and David looks ready to do this, too. He is doing it, Patrick knows. The doubts will take hold again once the music ends, but right now he’s sure of it.

The song fades out in a haze of circular arpeggios and then it’s Patrick’s own words ringing inside his head.

_You make me feel right, David._

This declaration wasn’t what David had asked him to explain, but Patrick thinks maybe he just did.

Then it’s silent. Or Patrick assumes it’s silent, but there’s too much blood rushing in his ears to be sure. He’s vaguely aware of the hollow, harmonic thump of his guitar as he lays it down on the coffee table.

Now that there’s nothing between them but sincerity and air, he waits for the intensity to recede from David’s gaze, for the self-consciousness to creep back in. For him to retreat behind a quip or a mask. He doesn’t.

“Come here,” he says instead. And he reaches for Patrick. And gets his hands on him.


End file.
